CerebralDebris

Sorry for the month without updates. This has been a particularly hectic month for Charlotte and I – she’s busy with schoolwork and establishing a translation business (for which I’m designing and building the website), not to mention learning to drive and occasionally substitute teaching at the International School. I’ve been busy with work, and mortgage preparation (which is about a thousand times more tedious and annoying than you’d think it should be), and NaNoWriMo.

Yes, that’s right. For the second time in my life, I decided to join in and try to write a 50,000-word novel in just 30 days. I succeeded, hitting 50k on the 28th, and as of this post I’m over 53k. What’s pretty amazing is that I missed four days at the beginning of the month due to my New York trip, and three more over the course of the month due to preexisting social obligations. So I actually wrote 50,129 words in just 21 days, which is an average of 2,387 words per day … which is a lot! Big thanks to my lovely wife for keeping me on track and spending a lot of weekend mornings at the local coffee shop with me.

I think the story’s actually pretty good, too … definitely worth a second draft. It’s about a young girl who is attacked by a werewolf but manages to kill it and is subsequently recruited into a school of monster hunters. You can read an excerpt over at my NaNoWriMo Page if you’d like.

Unfortunately, all the writing and paperwork (not to mention Thanksgiving and our one-year wedding anniversary!) hasn’t left me a whole lot of time for other activities, like updating this blog or promoting The Blood That Bonds. Both of these things will be addressed in December, although I’m also going to try to keep writing on a regular basis, AND we’re celebrating Christmas in LA FRANCE this year, so there will be traveling and such getting in the way as well.

There’s just not enough time in the day, week, month and year, you know?

I kept a couple of pics out of the general galleries I posted from our Kentucky trip last week because I wanted to get a bit artsy with them. Here’s one – a really nice low-lighting shot of some Woodford Reserve barrels in the aging warehouse, where the liquid inside makes the final transformation from clear grain alcohol to sweet, brown, mellow bourbon.

Yum!

I’m guest-blogging for the first time in my life today, over at Reading with a Bite, an independent book news and review blog dedicated to vampire fiction and more. Here are the first few paragraphs:

Much ado has been made over the current “vampire trend” and its potential longevity. People are curious: why and how have vampires become so popular? What has caused them to capture the fancy of the mainstream public after years of being appreciated mainly by fans of the horror genre? The answer to that question lies in the slow move from terror to sympathy that people have made over the past few decades, due in large part to the efforts of many authors, screenwriters, directors, and other artists.

Once upon a time, not so very long ago, vampires were the bad guys. Remember those days? Dracula bending menacingly over a delirious Lucy Westenra; Kurt Barlow and his servant Mr. Straker slowly bringing the town of Salem’s Lot to ruin; Keifer Sutherland and his cronies menacing Corey Haim’s family … vampires were nearly always portrayed as voracious, evil killers …

If you’re interested in reading the rest, you can find it at Reading with a Bite. I think it’s a pretty solid essay, and of course I get to plug my book, The Blood That Bonds, as well! Thanks very much to Lindsay for the opportunity.

Oh, and the control to turn off the music that starts when the site loads is over on the right, a little bit down the page. ;)

Note: This is a continuation of the previous blog post.

We awake bright and early (for Charlotte and I, at least … so 8:45am) and find that the heavy cloud cover from the previous day has lifted, and the sky is clear and blue. This means it’s going to be a bit warmer out, which is good, because we end up spending quite a bit of time outdoors, as it turns out.

We grab breakfast with Gabe and Brett — Starbucks again, and then head off on the fairly lengthy drive to the Maker’s Mark distillery. This takes us west out of Lexington, a drive which will continue until we’re south of Louisville, which is kind of nice since it shaves a bit of time off the trip home. Also, we get to drive through some very pretty country on a nice fall day. Not bad!

We eventually leave the Bluegrass Parkway and turn onto rural route 555, which is also pretty and takes us past a weird combination of golf courses, gigantic mansions, and trailer homes. I guess when you go where the land is cheap, you find all sorts of people willing to take advantage of that fact. On our way to the distillery we start seeing signs for “Historic Lincoln Birthplace” and decide that we might as well stop. This turns out to be a minor detour in terms of actual distance, but eats up close to an hour of our time, which is a good thing since we otherwise would’ve been incredibly early for the first distillery tour.

The “Lincoln” in question turns out not to be Abraham, but Abraham’s mother and father, who were born and lived within a mile of each other out here in roughly the middle of nowhere, Kentucky. The Lincoln family log cabin has been reconstructed on its actual spot, while the Hanks family cabin (Abe’s mom) is original, but was picked up and moved in order to create the historic site. We stop in at the gift shop and pay the $2 per head to tour the grounds, then wander around. The Lincoln cabin is one big room with a small and inaccessible upstairs section. The Hanks cabin is practically a mansion by contrast, having four defined rooms downstairs and a big sewing room upstairs. Both cabins are decorated with period antiques. Both are also freezing, dank, dim, and depressing. As Brett put it succinctly after a few minutes in the Lincoln cabin: “Okay … this would suck!”

We spend some time checking out the cabins and the grounds, which butt right up against a golf course upon which a bunch of guys are driving their golf carts in a most hazardous fashion. This proves amusing, as do the remains of what appears to once have been a well, but is now a creepy stone cavern with a spring at its base. Done exploring, we head back off toward Maker’s Mark.

We eventually arrive at the distillery, which is somewhat larger and a bit more industrial-looking than Woodford Reserve, but still pretty quaint and picturesque. We hang out in what used to be the owners’ house, which has now been turned into the central tour location, waiting for things to get started. Eventually we’re herded together and begin our tour. It’s similar to the Woodford Reserve tour, albeit in somewhat larger numbers. Where Woodford has three fermenting vats and stores about 5000 barrels, Maker’s has something like 36 fermenting vats and stores a correspondingly higher number of barrels. They’re still “small batch” though, because they only bottle using 160 barrels at a time. Oddly, given that it has so many more barrels, their aging warehouse doesn’t smell as good as Woodford’s. Maybe the stone walls do a better job of trapping in the scent?

At the end of the tour we get to do a tasting, which includes a small glass of Maker’s and a bourbon ball, but also includes something interesting: a small glass of “White Dog” (aka: White Lightning, aka: un-aged whiskey). It has an odd, ferment-y smell … like a combination of corn and yeast with an alcohol finish. On the tongue it lacks much flavor, and burns a bit more than the aged product. Overall, I wouldn’t recommend it compared to the finished version!

Gabe and Brett buy a small bottle of Maker’s to hand-dip in wax at the gift shop. Charlotte and I go for a full 750 ML bottle, which has a horrible label featuring the founder’s face on it, but is otherwise identical to a regular maker’s bottle. Gabe dunks theirs, Charlotte dunks ours, many pictures are taken, and I buy a bourbon-dipped cigar that I will probably forget to smoke until it is dried out and revolting. WOO!

We finished up our tour by visiting the Maker’s Mark cafe, where we acquired various bourbon-barbecue sandwiches, along with some sides and drinks. Pretty tasty for cheap cafe food. Charlotte and I each bought a bourbon cookie for the road, and I decided to eat mine while driving fifty-five on a twisty rural route. This caused a bit of a problem when we came up over a hill and I had a moment of indecision when faced with a fork in the road, finally decided to slam on the breaks and screech around to the left, still hanging precariously on to my cookie with one hand and turning the wheel with the other, all the while bumping over potholes and road debris, since we were now on a median rather than on the expected road surface. Ah, road trips.

Eventually we found our way to 65 north, and spent the next three hours or so making our way home. Our trip to Kentucky was over, but it will remain forever in our hearts. And our livers … at least, until that bottle of Maker’s is gone.

» Links: Lexington Trip Day 2 Pics

This past weekend, Charlotte and I visited Kentucky with our friends Gabe and Brett. Kentucky is not actually my home, old or otherwise … in fact I’ve never been in the state before, but Gabe went to high school there, and Brett grew up there, and they both went to UK, so they acted as tour guides for the weekend. We stayed in a Super 8 motel, right down the street from the Hustler store … as you can imagine, it was luxurious.

Lexington’s a pretty town, not too huge but big enough to feel like a city. There’s a nice touch of Southern Hospitality without it being grating or overbearing. The presence of the UK campus right in the center of things helps keep a fairly youthful, modern feel to the populace. It’s also currently responsible for a LOT of construction … apparently UK hasn’t heard that we’re in a recession, because they’re putting up new buildings like crazy. Also, there is plenty of sausage gravy to be had which, from my point of view, is a definite plus.

On Friday night we stopped by a local UK pizza joint and had some dinner before retiring to the aforementioned deluxe accommodations to crash for the night. The next morning we got up, ate breakfast, and headed out to the Woodford Reserve Distillery, where they make some of the most delicious bourbon ever to grace this green earth. They are a small batch distillery, working with only 140 barrels at a time and storing only about 5000 barrels at once. Each barrel holds about 120 liters of bourbon, or about 160 standard-sized bottles, so each batch is about 22.4 thousand standard bottles. To give an idea of why that’s “Small Batch,” the largest bourbon producer in Kentucky stores about 1.8 million barrels at any given time. 5000 is damn near artisan level by comparison.

We toured the mixing and fermentation building, the distilling building, the aging warehouse (aka: the best-smelling place on earth), and the bottling facility. Then we went up for a free tasting and a bourbon ball. Delicious! We bought some bourbon-chocolate-cherry candies in the gift shop, and headed for our next stop: Keeneland, a gigantic horse-racing track.

We arrived and, after looking for a free parking spot for about twenty years, finally managed to get inside the building. Two things needed to be accomplished before the fifth race began. One: Charlotte and I needed to put some money down so we could say that we’d officially bet on a horse race. Two: we needed to get some food up in us, because we were all starving. I put ten bucks on horse #6, “Artisan” to win, and Charlotte told me to put ten bucks on Horse #3 to show … but I got flustered at the betting window and accidentally put it on horse #2, “Irish Ridge” to show. Oops. Next we went upstairs and acquired stew, a brat, a burger, and a couple of beers. After wandering around trying to find a place to eat them AND see the race at the same time, we finally managed to procure a bench just minutes before the race started.

And they’re off! The horses go running as we shout encouragement in between bites of food and sips of Bud Light (it was all they had). #6 – Artisan – My horse immediately falls into second to last place and never contends. Sonuva … fortunately #2 – Irish Ridge- the horse we accidentally put ten bucks on to show, ends up winning the entire thing. We make $12 on that $10 bet, so we’re  down $8 for the day at the end of race five. We decide to stick around for race six even though it’s freezing out, and head off to place one more bet. This time, Charlotte sees horse #7 – CS Silk – nuzzling one of the others as they’re walking on to the track, and decides she wants to bet on him because “he’s nice!” … seems as good a reason as any other, so we put five bucks on him to show.

Race number six goes off, and our horse manages to win it in a fairly thrilling victory, holding off a few last-minute pushes from other horses. Gabe and Brett are also happy, as their bet moved up from dead last to #3 right at the end. Charlotte and I end up winning $14.50 on our $5, putting us at a grand total of $26.50 won for $25 spent, or a net profit of $1.50. Woohoo! Judging by this sample, I am prepared to declare her a gambling genius. Our future wealth will no doubt be prodigious.

After watching some more horses wander around, we decide that it’s simply too cold out (okay, I actually wuss out first and beg everyone else to leave). It’s late afternoon and we decide we need to be someplace warm, with beer. This leads us to an irish pub in downtown Lexington, where we hang out for about an hour, nursing our beers / ciders and watching a college football game whose outcome we don’t really care about. We then split to go back to the hotel, relax for a bit, and meet up again for dinner.

Gabe and Brett take us to a favorite hangout of theirs in college, Ramsey’s.They promise us good food, lots of it, and spectacular pies. We are not disappointed on any of those counts. I get a broiled pork sandwich with pinto beans, Charlotte gets a plate of fried chicken livers with corn oysters, fried green tomatoes, and summer squash. Brett gets a “hot brown” and Gabe gets a country-fried steak with macaroni & cheese, potatoes & gravy, and fried green tomatoes. The entrees are delicious, but the pie is definitely the star. I get a chocolate brownie / peanut butter cream combo. Charlotte and Brett get slices of the chocolate pecan pie, and Gabe enjoys a coconut cream pie simply because he knows that coconut grosses me out!

Stuffed ridiculously full, we head back to the hotel to crash for the night. Tomorrow: a big drive out to the Maker’s Mark distillery, along which we will encounter the home of Lincoln’s parents, and after which I will nearly kill us all while trying to eat a bourbon cookie and drive at the same time!

» Link: Day One Pictures at My Flickr Page

Well, the end of September has come and gone, and at last we’ve reached a time when I am in charge of my hair again, after swearing not to touch it (or my sideburns) until 9/30. So naturally on 10/1, the clippers came out. But before that happened, we did a little photo shoot. Then AFTER that happened, we did another little photo shoot.

I think the results speak for themselves!

Big props to my lovely wife for talking me into the costumes (including awesome fake “mother” tattoo). She’s the best!

It was a lot of work, but I’ve finally launched TheBloodThatBonds.com. The site is dedicated to promoting my novel, which I’ve released as a free eBook in a variety of formats (with more coming). Please check it out and forward it to anyone you think might be interested!

I’ve been experimenting lately with combining mild amounts of the tropical flavors I became temporarily obsessed with after our honeymoon with more standard, less fruity drinks. After a few successes and a few not-so-successes, I think I’ve come up with something good enough to post. I’ve dubbed it the Berry in Paradise. Here it is:

Berry in Paradise

2.5 oz white rum
1 oz coconut rum
1 oz raspberry liqueur
half a small lime
heavy dash bitters

Cut the lime half into wedges and muddle in bottom of a shaker with the bitters and raspberry liqueur. Add the two types of rum and shake vigorously over ice. Strain into a martini glass and garnish with a brandied cherry and a twist of lime.

The coconut rum really backs up the lime, which is the star of the dish, while the raspberry liqueur adds enough sweetness to counterbalance the acidity, and the white rum gives it the kick that any good cocktail deserves. I actually add more than a half a lime to mine … but I’m addicted to citrus and don’t recommend that for most people!

Thanks to PhilipRobbins for the picture!

Last picture post for a bit (but I’ve got a cocktail and a book review coming soon). Just off of the midway at the New York State Fair, we stumbled upon this horrifying display, and I couldn’t help but try and take an artsy picture of it!

By the way, the title of this post is the most obscure reference in the history of the internet. There are only four or five people who could possibly get it, and I’m willing to bet I’m the only one who remembers it.

Hooray, hanging out in my bedroom and making up songs with my other teenage friends!

Oh, and here once more are links to my recent galleries:

• Cuse Trip
• Demolition Derby

It’s going to be a picture-full week here on cDebris, as I’ve got another one coming for you guys tomorrow too. Here’s today’s shot: Charlotte, taking her first-ever ferris wheel ride. I really like this one, especially the way you can just see her eyes behind the sunglasses!

And here again are links to my two galleries from our recent trip!

• Cuse Trip
• Demolition Derby